down this hill, Anne--our
first walk together anywhere, for that matter?"

"I was coming home in the twilight from Matthew's grave--and you came
out of the gate; and I swallowed the pride of years and spoke to you."

"And all heaven opened before me," supplemented Gilbert. "From that
moment I looked forward to tomorrow. When I left you at your gate that
night and walked home I was the happiest boy in the world. Anne had
forgiven me."

"I think you had the most to forgive. I was an ungrateful little
wretch--and after you had really saved my life that day on the pond,
too. How I loathed that load of obligation at first! I don't deserve
the happiness that has come to me."

Gilbert laughed and clasped tighter the girlish hand that wore his
ring. Anne's engagement ring was a circlet of pearls. She had refused
to wear a diamond.

"I've never really liked diamonds since I found out they weren't the
lovely purple I had dreamed. They will always suggest my old
disappointment ."

"But pearls are for tears, the old legend says," Gilbert had objected.

"I'm not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as well as sad. My
very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes--when
Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables--when Matthew gave me the
first pretty dress I ever had--when I heard that you were going to
recover from the fever. So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert,
and I'll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy."

But tonight our lovers thought only of joy and never of sorrow. For
the morrow was their wedding day, and their house of dreams awaited
them on the misty, purple shore of Four Winds Harbor.

CHAPTER 4

THE FIRST BRIDE OF GREEN GABLES

Anne wakened on the morning of her wedding day to find the sunshine
winking in at the window of the little porch gable and a September
breeze frolicking with her curtains.

"I'm so glad the sun will shine on me," she thought happily.

She recalled the first morning she had wakened in that little porch
room, when the sunshine had crept in on her through the blossom-drift
of the old Snow Queen. That had not been a happy wakening, for it
brought with it the bitter disappointment of the preceding night. But
since then the little room had been endeared and consecrated by years
of happy childhood dreams and maiden visions. To it she had come back
joyfully after all her absences; at its window she had knelt through
that night of